Angry Mob Castrates Rapist With Meat Cleaver (Photos)

A mob in India cut off a man's genitals after he was allegedly caught trying to rape a teenage girl.

The incident took place in Sri Ganganagar, a city in the north western Indian state of Rajasthan.

Local residents were alerted to the sexual assault when they heard the girl screaming for help, according to the Daily Mail. They arrived on the scene to find Suresh Kumar, 40, holding the teenage girl up against a wall.

A mob quickly formed, and Kumar was taken to a butcher shop. The mob reportedly beat him with sticks for an hour before castrating him with a meat cleaver.

ADVERTISEMENT

Thanks for watching!

Kumar's severed genitals were then left in the middle of the road. Kumar was taken to a hospital and is said to be in critical condition.

The girl was treated for shock and is undergoing counseling.

Witness Aamir Dhawan, 30, explained that no one came to Kumar's aid because they considered his crime to be "intolerable."

ADVERTISEMENT

Thanks for watching!

ADVERTISEMENT

Thanks for watching!

"We have had a lot of intolerable offenses against women in this country recently, with girls being raped, hung, and molested, and it's time it stopped," Dhawan said, according to the Daily Mail. "This sends out a very strong message to anyone like that -- if you do it you will be punished."

Local police have condemned the vigilante justice and have vowed to punish those responsible.

"As deplorable as these crimes are, law and order has to be maintained, and not lynch justice," a police spokesperson said. "We ask those men who carried out this attack to hand themselves in before we find them."

In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, authorities are considering making castration an official punishment for rape, drawing widespread criticism from human rights groups.

"Any irreversible procedure like castration, amputation or the death penalty should not be considered, given that no human justice system is perfect and infallible," Citizen Action Group on Enforced Disappearance spokesman Thomas Fann told Free Malaysia Today.

Shamini Darshni Kaliemuthu, executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia, expressed a similar view, suggesting that castration is not a sufficient way to address the problem of rape.

"We urge the Sarawak state government to reject this proposal as it is a violation of human rights," she said. "We hope that the Sarawak government will review a more effective and humane punishment for these offenders under the Penal Code that upholds justice and fairness."